Watchdog slams poor planning that led to botched rollout of Healthcare.gov

By Robert King, Robert King

Published December 20, 2015

The Obama administration didn't properly test or correct errors with healthcare.gov before the website's disastrous launch in fall 2013, a government watchdog said.

The Government Accountability Office released a report Wednesday that outlined ongoing the problems that contributed to the difficult launch of the site, which residents in 37 states use to purchase insurance through Obamacare. The report said the administration improved the site since the botched launch but still has several problems to correct.

In fall 2013, healthcare.gov launched with great fanfare by the administration. But the site continually crashed and stalled, leaving customers unable to browse or buy healthcare plans.

The report tied problems to three areas: inadequate planning for the capacity needed to serve millions of customers, software coding errors that weren't fixed and a lack of functionality.